Semi-automatic warping and mooring arrangement



Jan. 24, 1967 SAXE ETAL SEMI-AUTOMATIC WARPING AND MOORING ARRANGEMENT Filed Nov. 6, 1964 2 Sheets-Sheet 1 Jan. 24, 1967 L. SAXE ETAL 3,300,187

SEMI-AUTOMATIC WARPING AND MOORING ARRANGEMENT 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 Filed Nov. 6, 1964 United States Patent Ofilice 3,300,187 Patented Jan. 24, 1967 Claims. 61. 2s4 17z Recently designed large cargo ships are provided with suflicient automatic equipment to enable sailing with reduced crews. This has resulted in a great demand for an effective mooring arrangement that is simple to opcrate.

The wind force on large ships having large superstructure is often considerable (especially in ballast), and when the ship has been brought in position for mooring, it is important to get the mooring hawsers quickly ashore. Synthetic fibre hawsers that are very easy to handle because of great pliancy, small absorption of water and low specific weight compared to hemp hawsers, have made this possible by the aid of small motor craft that are considerably easier to maneuver than tugs. The most usual synthetic fibre for mooring hawsers, is polypropylene, which floats and can quickly be brought ashore, provided that the hawser can be fed sufficiently rapidly to a place near the fairlead, as the motorboat will usually not have suflicient engine power to, for example, pull it from a winch drum via the necessary number of guide rollers. The great hawser length that is necessary for the largest ships, as well as the demand for a reduced crew, makes the conventional arrangement, with suflicient length coiled up on deck, undesirable.

When all hawsers are secured ashore, they should be heaved in as quickly as possible with great force. The most practical way to heave in individual hawsers is to spool the hawser on to a drum, but if it is spooled on with full tension, the hawser will quickly be damaged when there are several layers on the drum, as it will tend to crush the underlying layers. In addition, the tension will also decrease when there are many layers on the drum, as the torque of the engine is almost constant.

It is therefore preferable to heave in the hawser by aid of a warping head on the mooring winch (in the present instance two cylindrically grooved drums) and spool the running-off part with reduced tension on a storage drum. The storage drum may be operated separately or receive power transmission from the winch via a slipping clutch. A system having two cylindrically grooved drums and a storage drum with mechanical transmission from the grooved drums is shown in Ernst: Die Hebezeuge, volume I, page 36, edition II, 1952.

When the ship is warped its desired position, it is usually moored with steel wires, and the hawsers are spooled in or used as additional mooring lines.

The invention is further described in the following description and claims with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:

FIG. 1 shows the forecastle of a large ship having warping and mooring apparatus thereon constructed in accordance with the invention;

FIG. 2 is a fragmentary side elevational view taken along line 2--2 of FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a fragmentary sectional view taken along line 33 of FIG. 2;

FIG. 4 is an enlarged fragmentary sectional view of additional apparatus constructed in accordance with the present invention;

FIG. 5 is an enlarged sectional View of a portion of the apparatus illustrated in FIG. 4;

FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram of a typical hydraulic oil system for use in conjunction with apparatus of the present invention;

FIG. 7 is a schematic illustration of certain additional apparatus of the present invention; and

FIG. 8 is a fragmentary enlarged plan View of a modification of the apparatus of the invention illustrated in FIGS. 1-3.

Referring now to FIG. 1, the forecastle of a large ship having two winches W, W, each including a pair of spaced, grooved drums 5 for pulling hawser T, and a conventional drum 2 for wire rope, are arranged for warping and mooring. A is a conventional anchor windlass of the ship. The storage drum 1 for the hawser T is, because of its large dimensions and danger of damage in heavy weather, placed below the forecastle deck. The drum 1 is driven by a hydraulic, uni-directional engine 3, which is driven by a separate pump 4. The two cylindrically grooved drums 5 are both driven by a gear transmission 6 and separate drive means 611, in the present instance on the winch shaft (which transmission may be provided with a gear shift for several speeds), and pulls the hawser T with great tension. On the other hand the running-off part of the hawser T is pulled with considerably reduced tension through a rope hatch 7 in the deck via a guide roller 8 to the storage drum 1. An adjustable overflow valve 20, between pressure and return lines, 21 and 22 respectively for hydraulic fluid, assures that the driving pressure is maintained constant, thus the torque for the storage drum 1 is also maintained approximately constant.

In this example the storage drum is driven via an hydraulic transmission. T o obtain a suitable tension in the rope the storage drum driving engine has to give an approximately constant torque independently of the rpm. and turning direction of the storage drum. In addition, torque has to be maintained during stand-still if tension is to be maintained on the pulling drum-s 5. Such a constant-torque-engine can be hydraulic as 3 in the example, but operated by a separate pump 4 independent of the winch. The engine can also be steamor air-driven if it has a suitable characteristic such that when it is engaged it is giving an approximately constant torque in the tensioning direction for the rope independent of the r.p.m. and direction of rotation of the pull drums 5. Most multicylindered piston engines, tooth wheel engines, wing engines, etc. have such a characteristic when the driving pressure is constant. Where the storage drum 1 is provided with its own driving unit, an additional advantage is made possible whereby the drum can be used for pulling slack hawser directly without laying the hawser around the pulling drums 5. In this way a considerably increase in slack rope speed can be obtained. This is especially important aft, as the propellers must not be used before the lines are pulled home.

When the lines are fed out by mean-s of the grooved drums, the arrangement can be supplied by a roller 24 (see FIG. 7) held in position by biasing means 24a and which presses the line against the periphery of the forward grooved drum 5 on the spot where it leaves the drum when it is payed out during landing. The provision of the roller 24 avoids snarling of the line below the winch if the tension in the running-off part decreases.

If there is a great distance between winch W and fairlead F, a roller 11, driven by a hydraulic engine 26, may be provided to press the hawser T against a guide roller 25 in or near the fairlead. When the winch pays out the line, the oil pressure from the pump 4 may be connected to the drive roller 11 (see FIG. 6), and this oil pressure may, via an outwardly biased plunger 12, press the drive roller 11 in towards the guide roller 25. A spring 13 J biases the drive roller 11 back when the winch stops paying out the line and the oil pressure is decreased.

To secure approximately constant rope tension the engine 26 of the drive roller 11 must, like the engine of the storage drum, give a higher peripheral speed to the roller 11 than the two pulling drums 5, and if necessary be provided with an adjustable overflow valve 27 between pressure and return pipes to secure constant torque. (See FIG. 6.)

When an arrangement with two parallel-grooved drums is used, the hawser will slip a small amount in the grooves, as the pull in the hawser gradually decreases and the hawser thereby gets shorter from the point of entry on the first groove on the drums and until it runs off the last groove and goes to the storage drum. To compensate for slipping, the drum diameter may be decreased from groove to groove on the two groove drums. (See FIG. 8.) In this manner the advantage is obtained that the hawser will always keep tight around all layers on the groove drums, when hawser is fed forward with the winch, especially when apparatus such as heretofore described and illustrated in FIG. 7 is utilized.

If it is desirable to have a short distance between the pulling drums and the storage drum 1, a spooling apparatus may be fitted on the storage drum. To this end the spooling apparatus preferably comprises a radially extending spool arm 28 having spaced rollers or pulleys 29a and 29b for guiding the hawser T from the bracket 1a mounted storage drum 1. As illustrated in FIG. 4, after the hawser T leaves the pulley 29b it passes through a hawser guideand bearing 14 and then through the aperture 7 in the main deck. The spool arm 28 is free to rotate about the vertical axis AA of the hawser where it comes into the pulley 2%.

It is not always practical, due to space limitations, to make the inner bore on the hawser guide 14, of sufiicient diameter that a hawser having eyes 15 (which it usually has at the ends) can pass. To permit the hawser T with eyes to be pulled through the guide 14 of the spool arm, the guide may have an inner, axially divided lining 14a having an annular, radial shoulder portion 14b for engaging support means 140 and 14d of the guide 14. As the support means 140 is firmly connected to the bracket 1a while the support means 14d is connected to the spool arm 28, it is preferable to provide grooves 16 for a ring of journalling balls 17 on the exterior of the lining 14a. When the hawser T with eye 15 is to be pulled through the guide 14 for the spool arm 13, the two halves are pulled out axially thus splitting the lining, and the-hawser then may be pulled through the diameter that corresponds to the outer diameter of the divided lining.

Although the invention has been described with a certain degree of particularity, it is understood that the present disclosure has been made only by way of example and that numerous changes in the details of construction and combination and arrangement of parts may be made without departing from the spirit and the scope of the invention as hereinafter claimed.

What is claimed is:

1. Apparatus for mooring and warping a ship with hawser and the like, said ship having a fairlead and at least one mooring winch; said apparatus comprising: a first and second hawser pull drum, said second drum having an axis parallel to said first drum, spaced therefrom and adjacent thereto, each of said drums having a plurality of grooves about the periphery thereof to permit hawser to be passed therearound, and drive means to impart rotation to said drums to pay-out hawser wrapped upon said drums upon rotation thereof in one direction and to pull-in hawser upon rotation in the other direction; a hawser storage drum positioned realtive to said grooved drums to store hawser thereon; drive means connected to said storage drum for imparting uni-directional rotation thereto at a substantially constant torque and independently of the direction of rotation of said pull drums; said storage drum drive means imparting less torque to said storage drum than said pull drum drive means imparts to said pull drums; a pair of rollers approximate said fairlead to receive and engage hawser therebetween, at least one of said rollers having drive means connected thereto for imparting motion to said hawser, said one driven roller having a direction of rotation to pay out hawser engaged between said rollers.

2. Apparatus in accordance with claim 1 wherein the axis of one of said drums is forward of the axis of the other of said drums, said apparatus including a roller adjacent the periphery of the forward one of said turning drums at the point where the hawser leaves said roll upon paying out hawser, and biasing means connected to said roller to press said roller against said hawser.

3. Apparatus in accordance with claim 1 wherein said one of said rollers is movable between a first position, spaced from said other roller and a second position, to engage hawser lying between said rollers; one of said rollers having an outwardly biased plunger connected thereto to maintain said rollers in said first position, and means interconnecting said roller drive means to cause said plunger to move into said second position.

4. Apparatus in accordance with claim 1 wherein said ship includes a main deck and said mooring winch is mounted thereon, and said storage drum is located below said main deck; an aperture in said main deck between said storage drum and said mooring winch for passing hawser therethrough, a bracket supporting said storage drum beneath said main deck, and a radially extending spool arm having spaced rollers for guiding said hawser between said aperture and said drum.

5. Apparatus in accordance with claim 4 wherein said spool arm has a hawser guide intermediate the path of said hawser between said rollers and said aperture, support means concomitant with said bracket and said spool arm for engaging said guide, said guide having a tubular, inner, axially split and removable lining, and means exteriorly of said guide for engaging said support means.

References Cited by the Examiner UNITED STATES PATENTS 467,529 1/1892 Victor.

530,995 12/1894 Humphrey 254172 2,256,982 9/1941 Lawler 254 2,279,853 4/1942 White 254-1757 2,315,628 4/1943 Lamond 254172 2,991,024 7/1961 Goode.

3,005,622 10/1961 Garnier 254175.7 3,020,022 2/1962 Turnquist 254175.7

FOREIGN PATENTS 281,595 1/1931 Italy.

I SAMUEL F. COLEMAN, Primary Examiner. 

1. APPARATUS FOR MOORING AND WARPING A SHIP WITH HAWSER AND THE LIKE, SAID SHIP HAVING A FAIRLEAD AND AT LEAST ONE MOORING WINCH; SAID APPARATUS COMPRISING: A FIRST AND SECOND HAWSER PULL DRUM, SAID SECOND DRUM HAVING AN AXIS PARALLEL TO SAID FIRST DRUM, SPACED THEREFROM AND ADJACENT THERETO, EACH OF SAID DRUMS HAVING A PLURALITY OF GROOVES ABOUT THE PERIPHERY THEREOF TO PERMIT HAWSER TO BE PASSED THEREAROUND, AND DRIVE MEANS TO IMPART ROTATION TO SAID DRUMS TO PAY-OUT HAWSER WRAPPED UPON SAID DRUMS UPON ROTATION THEREOF IN ONE DIRECTION AND TO PULL-IN HAWSER UPON ROTATION IN THE OTHER DIRECTION; A HAWSER STORAGE DRUM POSITIONED RELATIVE TO SAID GROOVED DRUMS TO STORE HAWSER THEREON; DRIVE MEANS CONNECTED TO SAID STORAGE DRUM FOR IMPARTING UNI-DIRECTIONAL ROTATION THERETO AT A SUBSTANTIALLY CONSTANT TORQUE AND INDEPENDENTLY OF THE DIRECTION OF ROTATION OF SAID PULL DRUMS; SAID STORAGE DRUM DRIVE MEANS IMPARTING LESS TORQUE TO SAID STORAGE DRUM THAN SAID PULL DRUM DRIVE MEANS IMPARTS TO SAID PULL DRUMS; A PAIR OF ROLLERS APPROXIMATE SAID FAIRLEAD TO RECEIVE AND ENGAGE HAWSER THEREBETWEEN, AT LEAST ONE OF SAID ROLLERS HAVING DRIVE MEANS CONNECTED THERETO FOR IMPARTING MOTION TO SAID HAWSER, SAID ONE DRIVEN ROLLER HAVING A DIRECTION OF ROTATION TO PAY OUT HAWSER ENGAGED BETWEEN SAID ROLLERS. 